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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7372143" data-attributes="member: 82106">OK, do you hear yourself? You're complaining about a 'weakness' in a style of play based on the hypothesis that the players DON'T ACTUALLY WANT TO PLAY AN FRPG AT ALL! There's no need for any kind of an RPG in order to sit around the kitchen table tipping a few! This is meaningless in any realistic discussion of actual RPGs in the real world, which is exactly what my comment was about (FYI it started "I don't agree that this is true in practice" lol). Its another 'spherical cow', only its even MORE divorced from the real world than my endless maze was (which could actually exist as a game, though a very limited one). Nobody EVER does what you're proposing, ever. More realistically, perhaps sometimes in our group we'd get together with the intent to play and there wouldn't be much energy in it and we'd dither and fiddle and not really focus on doing much. I don't see why a Story Now game is any different, and it isn't IME. Now and then you just sit around the table shooting the <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> and maybe the PCs work on some project or other, invent a new spell, write a song, etc. That exists in my game, and it even has mechanical support! Its called an 'interlude', no dice are ever touched during this mode of play. It handles transitions and scenes you want to play out but that don't really contain any outright conflict. But the idea that entire games run this way all the time, to the point where a system that introduces action to the game is actually unwanted and subverts play? I find that to be ludicrous TBH. Objecting on that basis is going too far.OK, slow down a little bit here. Just because Story Now 'goes to the action' doesn't mean it is endless cliff-hangers with nothing else in between. It means that the narrative moves to what engages the primary concerns of the PCs (and thus by extension the players, or sometimes directly of the players). Yes, there will be action, adventure, and conflict, and there will be crises, that's what creates/results from dramatic movement. However to think that every single time the GM frames the next scene that it is some sort of flaming catastrophe that the characters are instantly thrust into the middle of is badly misrepresenting the concept.Think of [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s last example, of the bazaar and the feather and whatnot. Is there a 'crisis' going on in the bazaar? No, its relevant to the agenda of the character in question, and there's 'action' in the sense of an investigatory and preparatory scene. Nobody is in bodily danger, there's no combat, nothing of the sort. If the characters want to simply wander around the bazaar then I'm sure they can. Probably something will come up that engages their needs pretty soon. It might focus on a different character, or introduce some other new element. It might lead to an action sequence of some sort, etc. Yes, there will be a good bit of action in a game of this kind, however action is defined in the genre in play. I tend to think of most games as being sort of modeled on something like 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', there's 'talky bits' where story is established and character relationships are developed, and there are action sequences where 'stuff happens', and there are, now and then, travel montages and similar things. They are all interspersed to produce a narrative with pace and drama which follows a story arc that engages the characters dramatically. The exact contents of this arc are largely up to the players in terms of what they choose to be interested in, and then made concrete and given direction by the framing of the GM. Its not a 'true thing', it may well be a TYPE of game which is Story Now, and Blades in the Dark may well exemplify it, I don't know. It isn't a universal. Story Now can be as measured and contain as many kinds of material and establish whatever pace it is that the GM and players feel comfortable with. If the players want to blather around drinking in taverns much of the time, then I'm sure you can do that with any system, it doesn't even take rules! I would suggest that these scenes be played out in a more summary fashion than a combat, where you go by the minute or even second, but its not required that the game be rushed along just because it centers on the PCs.</blockquote>

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